4th of July {2011}

I know, I know, the 4th of July was over two months ago.  I'm just a little behind on blogging!  Better late than never, right?

We had a fun, relaxed 4th of July this year.

We went to the parade here in town in the morning.  Cedar City has a parade for everything, I swear :)

{At the parade}

 They got SO much candy!

 Kate kept running into the middle of the street . . . she's two, can you tell?

The girls sure love their daddy!

After the parade, we headed to St. George for a BBQ and to hang out w/ family.  We also went swimming at Coral Canyon - my parents own a home there.  The girls had so much fun jumping into the pool!

Later that night, we lit fireworks with some friends in our neighborhood - the Coons and the Holmgrens.  Jake and Chad had a great time lighting the fireworks while the rest of us watched!  I can't find those pics right now :(  When I do I'll post them.

I love the 4th of July!

Emmy Update

{Concentrating on her beautiful sidewalk chalk art piece :) }

Our poor Emmy has had a rough summer in the health department.

After our trip to Disneyland in May, Kate got Hand-Foot-Mouth disease (but only in her mouth) and generously passed it along to Emmy. I have never seen a child so sick!  Not only did she have a high fever for five days in a row, the poor girl couldn't eat for a week and a half and she lost five pounds. And since she couldn't eat, she had NO energy.  She sat on the couch and watched movies for a week, straight.  It was a rough couple of weeks at our house with sick kids. The doctor said Emmy had it a lot worse than most kids get it.  She couldn't even swallow her own spit - gross but true! And we tried sending Emmy to her last week of school, but since she had no energy, she couldn't do any of the fun things her teacher had planned and she had to be sent home :(  She even asked to be sent home one day.  And she LOVES school, so I knew she was really sick when that happened. (Don't worry, I didn't send her to school until after her fever went away.  The doc said she wouldn't be contagious at that point).

She had ulcer-like sores all over in her mouth, throat and around her mouth (hopefully you're not grossed out by this pic, but if you click on it, you can see the little ulcers on the inside of her bottom lip):

The crazy thing is that her skin totally cleared up when she wasn't eating (she has REALLY bad eczema). That's when we realized that she was allergic to something she was eating. We already knew she was allergic to nuts, legumes and eggs and had already cut those out of her diet. So we started eliminating things from her diet, trying to figure out what other food allergies she had. In the meantime, her eczema came back.

She finally started feeling normal (it took a good two or three weeks for the mouth sores to go away) when she got a staff infection in her right foot. She has a bad patch that she always scratches on that foot and that's where the infection started. It got so bad that she almost had to be hospitalized. But luckily her little body fought it off, with the help of two strong antibiotics.

Here are a couple pics of her foot:

Her foot got so swollen that the skin on her foot peeled off after the swelling went down.
Now she's back to normal!  We've had our fill of sickness this summer!

We recently had her re-tested for allergies and found out she is allergic to:

- Cow's milk
- Corn (which is in EVERYTHING!!!!)
- Soy (if something doesn't have corn in it, a lot of the time it has soy)
- Melons
- Grapes
- Podded veggies (string beans, peas, etc)
- Chocolate
- Vanilla

I may be missing a few things, but, as you can see, the poor girl has a LOT of food allergies.

Now we are in the process of trying to get rid of the allergies.  I had heard of people going to Chiropractors that work with holistic medicine who can eliminate allergies.  I'm not an all-natural, holistic kind of girl, but at this point, I was willing to try anything to help my daughter have a normal childhood.  How sad will Halloween be if she's still allergic to corn? (Almost all candy is made with corn syrup).  And most cake mixes have corn syrup, so I would have to send her own treats with her to birthday parties.  Let's not even talk about treats at school or the lunch room.

I'll keep this blog updated on how the allergy elimination works.  We went for the first time today and we worked on eliminating the egg allergy.  We'll find out on Wednesday if it worked, and we'll move on to the next allergy from there.

In the meantime, Emmy starts her last year of preschool at the end of the month!  It's been a fun, lazy summer filled with being sick (well, that part wasn't so fun);
going to the park;

baking with mommy;

playing outside;

and picking strawberries from Grammy and Papa's strawberry patch (almost a daily ritual);

but we're ready for school to start!
Let's hope the girls can stay healthy and happy for the rest of the year!

Summer Fun

Here's what we've been up to this summer:

{Hiking with friends}

(Check out that waterfall!)

{Playing in the sprinklers & eating popsicles}

{Having tea parties}

{Swimming & swim lessons}

{And taking lots of fun pics!}

What have you been up to?

Kate turns 2!

Our sweet little Kate {who, in fact, is not always so sweet, but very sassy!} turned two!  Can you believe it?

We had a family party for her with, what else?  A Tinkerbell party!  Our third Tinkerbell party in less than a year :)  What can I say?  We love Tinkerbell at our house.

I made her a delicious Tinkerbell cake {for reals - it was so yummy!}, which she loved.  And we had homemade peach ice cream.  Mmmm, so good.

{Kate loved the ice cream!}

{The Birthday Girl and mommy}

{Papa and Grammy}

Kate got some fun presents . . .

But her favorite, by far, was this Dora bath toy:

She carries it around with her everywhere!

{Uncle Derek thought something was funny . . .}

{Dawson loved the cake!}

{Aunt Lindsey and the Birthday Girl}

{Blowing out the candles!}

{Kate and her daddy - she is SUCH a daddy's girl!}

Here are Kate's two year stats:

{Height}:  35 inches (81st percentile)

{Weight}:  30 lbs (85th percentile)

She's slowed down a little!  She has always been off the charts in height, she's catching up to Emmy so fast.

 {Love this sweet little face}

Here are some things we want to remember about our Kate:

- Her favorite things in the world are a sippy cup of milk, her "cozy cozy" (a crib-sized comforter), her "lamby" (a stuffed animal lamb) and now her Dora doll.

- She totally can beat Emmy up.  She'll hit, pull hair and scratch.  And not only Emmy.  Jake and I have both had battle wounds, as well as a poor little boy at the gym :(  Naughty girl!  I finally had to tell Emmy to hit her back.  Emmy was not happy with this.  But, eventually, she realized she needed to defend herself against the sassy Katers!  And the hitting began . . .

- Despite her violence, she can be a sweet and cuddly girl.  She is so good at giving hugs.

- She is becoming a great little talker.  Sometimes she has to repeat herself once or twice, but we eventually can understand what she's telling us.  Most of the time, she talks in at least 4 or 5 word sentences.  She'll yell, "Stop it!" if she doesn't like what you're doing or saying (or in my case, singing . . .).  And she's really good at saying "thank you," even without being reminded.

- She loves eating broccoli, tomatoes, olives, blueberries, grapes and applesauce.  She's our good eater!

- She loves watching Diego.  When she wants to watch TV, that's what she asks for.

- She is becoming very independent.  She wants to do most things by herself.  If you don't let her, watch out!  The tantrums will begin!

- People ask all the time if her hair is naturally curly.  Honestly, what two-year-old is gonna let someone curl their hair???  I politely tell them yes, the curl is natural :)

- She's happy in the mornings!  Emmy, on the other hand, is not.  It's nice to have one child be a morning person!  She gets that from her dad . . .

- She LOVES to color!  She even colored with a permanent marker all over the counter, chairs and herself . . .

- She likes to sing (yes!).  She's got a cute little voice :)  One of her favorite songs is J Lo's "On the Floor" - that's right, she's turning to her latin roots.  Ha!

 {This girl loves the boat!  Grammy and Papa sold theirs, though :(  Anyone wanna take us out on the lake?}

{Sweet sisters}

We can't believe our baby is already two!
We'll keep her :)

Tinkerbell 30th!

I turned 30 this year.  That's right - three + zero.

Well, my wonderful husband decided to throw me a surprise party!  He recruited my sister and my friend, CC, to help him out.  I had NO clue - I was totally surprised.  The party was at my parent's house and some family and friends were there to help me celebrate!  It was a blast!

What's even better is that it was a Tinkerbell party.  Quite appropriate, I thought. Had to keep a youthful theme going, right?

So we ate some delicious food, had cake {of course}, played games - we even had a Tinkerbell pinata.  And we ended the night with a little Glee Karaoke on the Wii - thanks to my sis for that present!.  {Side note - Emmy and Kate totally fight over the microphone every time we play it.  Note to self: get another mic for the Wii!}.

The group that helped me celebrate:

The pinata!  My dad got some great {ahem} action shots:

{The first person never breaks it, right???}

{Lindsey knocked it off the rope!}

{Jake and Derek playing baseball with the pinata}

Me and my sis:

{Yes, I had a birthday crown :) }

So thanks to all my friends that could make it to the party and thanks to Jake, Linds and CC for putting it together!  There's nothing like friends and family to ease the pain of becoming another year older.

The thing is, I still act like feel like I'm 20.

I was kind of freaking out about it after I turned 29.  I couldn't believe I would be turning 30 years old.  Cuz that's always sounded old to me.

But you know what?  I've decided that 30 isn't too bad.  In fact, as one of my friends told me, 30 is the new 20!  And I feel just as good as I did when I was 20.  I'm getting older AND wiser.  So here's to another 30 years!

Doh!

Emmy likes to type her name into the computer.

I'll open a blank Word document and let her go.

A few weeks ago, she was typing her name and I looked at the computer.  

This is what I found:

Hahaha!  Jake and I were totally laughing.  At least it's all in innocence, right?